Uncovering the World of the Cedar Creek Mastodon

Volunteers at the Cedar Creek Mastodon Site in Morrow County, Ohio., on October 25, 2014.  The exposed white plastic corrugated drainage pipe in the foreground triggered the excavation when the digging for it exposed two mastodon teeth in September 2013.   The soybean farmer installed the pipe to drain water flowing from upland (background) toward Cedar Creek Bog, which is not too far from this pipe, but not shown in photo.  In October, a trench was cut nearby to the bog to compare soil layers of the bog, excavation pits, and surrounding land.  (Photo by Don Comis)

At the time the Cedar Creek mastodon died, it was not far from a bog surrounding a quiet shallow lake, with abundant growth of algae and other plants, as well as freshwater mollusks, like ram’s horns snails.  This lake was once the deepest part of a large glacial lake that covered the Cedar Fork Valley in Morrow County, Ohio, about 15,000 years ago, when the last of the glaciers that had covered two-thirds of Ohio melted.  The glaciers are what carved out the U-shaped Cedar Fork Valley.

The large lake was created by the melting, during a warming period between 20,000 and 15,000 years ago.   The water was dammed in by glacial walls.  When those walls melted, the lake drained, leaving only the deepest remnant, which began to fill with mud from decayed peat.   As the climate warmed much more abruptly, the mud layer became a marl layer, lime-rich mud, within 500 years.   Around the time of the Cedar Creek mastodon, another cooling period began, abruptly changing the mud back to peat as water levels dropped further.

The lake that the mastodon and early man walked near was filled with plant and animal life.  The coarse gravels at the base of the mastodon site were the bed of a pre-glacial stream that fed the lake.

Entombing Bones and Artifacts

The mud with broken pieces of rocks above the gravel likely came from debris flows as water flowed from the surrounding higher elevations, “entombing the bones and artifacts under a slurry of muddy debris,” according to a preliminary report by Gregory Wiles and his College of Wooster (Ohio) Climate Change class.

Wiles sent the report recently to excavation leader Nigel Brush, associate professor of geology at Ohio’s Ashland University.  The report also says that the high calcium carbonate content of the mud helped preserve the mastodon bones and associated man-made objects.

The report presents results of analyses of soil cores taken in and around the bog and nearby mastodon site, soil mapping, observations of soil layers in  a trench dug in October, connecting the bog and the mastodon site, as well as radiocarbon dating.   Analyzing these cores reveals the periodic warming and cooling of the planet over the past 15,000 years, caused by changes in the earth’s movements as it rotates and revolves around the sun, changes in ocean circulation, and changes in greenhouse gas levels.

Last September, Wiles--with Tom Lowell and  his graduate student Stephanie Allard, at the University of Cincinnati, and University of Illinois student Jacklyn Rodriguez--collected the sediment cores from the bog.  Earlier, in August, the College of Wooster students had used soil probes to map soil depths down to 20 feet in the bog.

Two Million Years of  Climate Change

The report’s introduction says that, “The Earth has spent the last 2 million years in a state of constant flux, moving between 20 periods of intense cold and glacier cover and periods of warming and glacial melt.”

Wiles and his students also participate in a tree ring project that seeks answers to the question of whether the widespread deforestation and the draining of wetlands by the early Ohio settlers could have caused a major drought in the early 1800’s, revealed by studying tree growth rings in old trees throughout Ohio.  Their blog  says:  “This question is relevant to the ever-present striving of climate scientists to investigate the relative roles of natural climate variability and anthropogenic [caused by man] change.”

Many of Ohio’s  trees date back to the 1600s, including some at Kenyon College  in Gambier, Ohio, near my Apple Valley home.  The group studies old trees, including places in Wayne County, such as the Johnson Woods State Nature Preserve  as well as the Secrest Arboretum, and on the campus of the College of Wooster.

The group made its last visit to the mastodon site on Nov. 13, also reported on the group’s blog , which includes more information as well as photos and a  "Tree Detective" video on the tree ring project.  Project participants also document the ages of barns as well as changes in climate by examining the tree rings from core samples taken from barn beams and comparing them to old living trees around the barn and throughout Ohio.

I have a website where I post information and photos on archaeology finds as well as all other aspects of Nature and natural history.  I began this blog and website to catch the spillover from the monthly stories I write for the Apple Valley Cider Press, mainly a regular "Nature Article" feature.  All of my writing is done on a volunteer basis.

Who Got to Mastodon First? Ice Age Wolves, Bears, or Man?

The Morrow County, Ohio, Cedar Creek Mastodon, might have met this fate, its dead carcass scavenged by dire wolves and other predators such as bears and saber-toothed "tigers", not to mention vultures.  This 1911 illustration  of dire wolves fighting with the tiger in the  LaBrea Tar Pits of California is in the public domain..

Life wasn’t easy in the Ice Age, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s beginning to look like Ohio’s Morrow County Mastodon might have been torn apart by a pack of Ice Age wolves.

We know that there was at least one wolf that bit into the mastodon’s bones because the excavation uncovered forensic evidence left behind by the guilty party—a canine tooth embedded in the bone.

There were several species of Ice Age wolves, but the “Dire” wolf  is the likeliest suspect because it depended on scavenging dead bodies more than killing, especially in the case of big game.   Although it weighed about 25 percent more than modern wolves, it was slower than other Ice Age wolf species, so it resorted to hunting in packs and killing slower moving animals like the mastodon or scavenging any corpse it stumbled into.

In the most complete report to date, to the volunteers participating in the dig, excavation leader Nigel Brush said he and his colleagues are beginning to wonder if the mastodon might have died of old age and then been eaten by the Dire wolf and other scavengers.

But they have not discarded the original hypothesis—that the mastodon was killed by Paleo-Indians   and butchered.  In that case, the scavenging was done after the men were through with the carcass.

Brush is an associate professor of geology at Ashland University in Ohio.

Brush reported that Brian Redmond , head of archaeology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, will have the bone with the embedded wolf tooth X-rayed to get a better view of the tooth.  He also wrote that, “The mastodon bones contain an abundance of gnaw and puncture marks from predators such as wolves and bears.  Among the bones of the mastodon, we have found a tooth (an incisor) and several fragments of leg bone that appear to be from some other Ice Age herbivore (perhaps a musk-ox or stag-moose ?).”

It seems to me that the scavenger hypothesis arose when Brush learned, from geological studies being done at the site, that the broken bones found in the excavation site had been carried there by water flowing from upland of the site, farther from the bog that would have made a natural trap-and-kill site for Paleo-Indians.

Brush also cited the fact that only two possible man-made cut marks on the bones have been found so far, leaving open the possibility that those cuts are not the work of human tools after all.   And most of the flint flakes found were the result of natural weathering and frost or from being washed into the excavation site, rather than from man using or making flint weapons or butchering tools.

But, Metin Eren,  an expert on lithics, the study of the human use of stone for tools, came to the lab at Ashland University and found that about a  the dozen of the flint pieces were possibly worked by people, so a few of the flakes will be sent to another lab for further analysis for blood and protein residues and edge wear from butchering.

Nick Kardulias, another lithics expert, will be doing a more detailed examination of the flint pieces and soil cores recovered from the site.  Kardulias and his students from the College of Wooster  in Ohio have been helping with the excavation along with students from Ashland University and other universities.

Dueling Hypotheses:  Man or Wolf?

He said the only way to decide between the two competing hypotheses is through the lab analyses that will continue through the winter at Ashland University.  He said that one of the critical pieces of evidence to support the Paleo-Indian kill hypothesis would be if the mastodon bones are found-- through carbon-14 testing--to be between 16,000 and 10,000 years old, when Paleo-Indians and mastodons co-existed.

Brush’ report included a Florida lab’s carbon-14 test results on samples taken from the bottom and top of the bog near the excavation site:  Plant material taken from the top of the bog dated to about 11,200 years ago,  while a wood sample from the bottom of the bog was about 12,500 years old.
Another critical piece of evidence to support the kill/butchery site hypothesis, he wrote, would be if they found mastodon blood and protein residues on some of the flint pieces they found that appeared to be used to butcher.   A fourth piece of critical evidence would be confirmation that the possible cut marks on two mastodon bones “are indeed cut marks.”

Brush discounted speculation that some of the rounded stones found near the bones were used to hammer bones to crush them, saying that the stones could just be one of the many cobble stones found  in the natural stone-and-gravel deposits below the excavation site.   He reported that, “We have washed dozens of these cobbles in the lab and have yet to find any fresh surface alteration that we could unequivocally equate with human tool use.”

Occam’s Razor

At that point in his report, Brush wrote that “Occam’s Razor is often quite useful in science:  The simplest explanation is usually the best explanation.  Given the highly battered condition of the cobbles thus far recovered from the site, natural weathering appears to be a much more likely explanation than human utilization.”  He showed a number of the possible hammerstones and other possible stone tools to several other professional archaeologists and all agreed  with Brush.

Brush also cites another axiom from his scientific experience:  “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

As part of this search for strong evidence, Greg Wiles, professor of geology at the College of Wooster, will submit two charcoal samples for carbon-14 dating to the same Florida lab that dated the bog samples, to see if the soil layer where the mastodon bones were found are in the same age range as the bog.  And, Redmond will submit a collagen sample, from one of the four mastodon teeth found, to the Florida lab for carbon dating--hoping there is enough collagen present to do the test.   Earlier this fall, Redmond had submitted a thoracic vertebrae from the Morrow County mastodon, but heavy weathering had removed too much collagen for carbon dating to succeed.

Brush’ report also said that Gregory McDonald, a bone specialist and senior curator of natural history at the National Park Service in Fort Collins, Colorado, might have time to visit the Ashland lab to identify some of the mastodon bones, when he speaks on December 12 at the Cleveland Museum, on "The Snowmastodon Project" .

Note:  What I call the Morrow County mastodon is officially called the Cedar Creek Mastodon, for the creek that runs near the excavation site.  Also, I have a website where I post information and photos on archaeology finds as well as all other aspects of Nature and natural history.  I began this blog and website to catch the spillover from the monthly stories I write for the Apple Valley Cider Press, mainly a regular "Nature Article" feature.  All of my writing is done on a volunteer basis.

Fragments of a  leg bone found at the Cedar Creek Mastodon Site could be that of the stag-moose, possibly another victim of the bone-crushing teeth of the Ice Age dire wolf.  (1912 illustration in public domain.) 

Leave the Predictions to Weatherbug, Not Woolly Bears!

The wide reddish-brown band on this woolly bear caterpillar could raise false hopes of a mild winter.  All the wide brown band tells you is that this caterpillar is mature and well fed.  That's good preparation for this creature as it crosses a bike path to seek shelter for the winter.  The caterpillar can survive even frozen solid.  (Photo by Don Comis)

On my annual walk from Kenyon College to my home in Apple Valley, using the Koksosing Gap Trail for 4.5 miles of the approximately 8-mile walk, I saw my first all-black caterpillar—well, actually I saw two of them, along with a few woolly bear caterpillars.

I probably had seen black caterpillars before but thought they were woolly bear caterpillars predicting a totally bad winter.   But I've learned that the width of the middle reddish-brown band on the brown and black woolly bears being a predictor of the severity of the upcoming winter is a myth.  Ironically it was started by a scientist, but later disproved.  Now scientists know that the only thing more brown on a woolly bear means is that the woolly bear is older, or  better fed, or both.

 The caterpillars are born mostly black and the brown band grows wider as the caterpillar gets bigger, with age and diet.

Since I saw two of these all-black caterpillars on Nov. 10, I believe they  are the caterpillars of the giant leopard tiger moth,not woolly bears--which become Isabella moths next year.   (Photo by Don Comis)

I also learned that woolly bears become Isabella tiger moths in the spring.   I found that out when I sent a photo of a woolly bear to the “Butterflies and Moths of North America” website and added that moth to my list of 111 moth species in Knox County, mostly found in Apple Valley.

But, fortuitously, the day before my big walk on Monday, Nov.10, I read a column in the Sunday Columbus Dispatch by John Switzer, one of my two favorite Nature columnists in the Sunday paper. Switzer was describing his daily walks in the country in November and mentions not only the woolly bear-Isabella connection, but also the fact that the all-black caterpillars become giant leopard tiger moths.  He quotes my other favorite Columbus Dispatch columnist, Jim McCormac, as saying that this moth is quite attractive.  McCormac, whose blog convinced me to use “blogspot.com” for my blog, also told Switzer that almost all the furry caterpillars we see in the fall turn into one of the many species of tiger moths.

Switzer says that in addition to black and brown, the furry fall caterpillars also come in blond and reddish-blonde.   At Apple Valley, I've seen two different species that are white—the banded tussock or pale tiger moth and the hickory tussock or hickory tiger moth.  I managed to photograph both the caterpillar and moth stages of the hickory tiger moth.

Certainly if Switzer, a former weather columnist, had any hopes left of a mild winter after seeing a woolly bear with a wide brown band, it's gone as the second snow of the season is falling tonight, one that could bring 2 to 3 inches--and be followed by below zero nights!  The snow came earlier than usual this year, with Cleveland getting 8 to 10 inches recently.

But then what does a woolly bear care about weather when it can survive the winter frozen solid?

The funny thing is that the very first blog I wrote, on Nov. 6, 2013, was on the woolly bear’s inability to predict weather.  Up to recently it had remained in the top five most popular of my postings, until the weekly mastodon reports wiped it and all other topics out of the top five.

White is one of the many colors the furry tiger moth caterpillars come in, depending on the species.  This is the hickory tiger moth caterpillar.  (Photo by Don Comis)

Note:  I also have a website where I post information and photos on archaeology finds as well as all other aspects of natural history.  This blog and website began to catch the spillover from the monthly stories I write for the Apple Valley Cider Press, mainly a regular "Nature Article" feature.

Mastodon Dig Turns to Lab for Answers

A look at the Nov. 9, 2014 mastodon dig.  It's likely that some or all of the mastodon bones were washed into the excavation site from upland drainage thousands of years ago.  (Photo by Don Comis)

You can see how cold it was on Nov. 9 by the winter clothing worn by volunteers.  (Photo by Don Comis)

As the search for mastodon bones on a soybean farm in Morrow County, Ohio, winds down before winter, the work shifts to a lab at Ashland University where the excavated materials will be analyzed to decide if it’s worth continuing the excavation in the spring.

Excavation leader, Dr. Nigel Brush-- Ashland University associate professor of geology--wrote in an e-mail answer to my questions, that the lab tests “will provide the final answer” as to whether the mastodon was killed and butchered by Paleo-Indians, as it appears.

Right Site?

Even if the answer is “yes”, the next question is whether the excavation site is the butchery site.  Brush wrote that, “Based on the geological work that is being done at the site, it is appearing more and more likely that the bones were brought to their present location by a debris flow from a site at a higher elevation. “  He added that an upland kill and butchery site doesn’t make as much sense as the current excavation site, which is right near the remnants of an ancient bog where the animal could have been trapped in the soft sediment by its weight.

The bog traces back to the Pleistocene era when it was a muddy glacial lake.

Students from Ohio’s Wooster College’s Climate Change class sank a probe more than 20 feet into the mud, gaining a record of environmental change over about the past 15,000 years.   Brush said, “They also found possible evidence for an old preglacial stream channel running through the bog."

Discovering the Ice Age

Students from Brush’  'Discovering the Ice Age” class are also among the volunteers on the dig.  

Since the skeleton parts found so far are very crushed and shattered, the focus of the excavation shifted after the first month, from recovering a complete skeleton for exhibit, to finding evidence of Paleo-Indians killing and butchering a mastodon.

Brush’s e-mail to me continued, “We have ample evidence from Ohio and surrounding states that Paleoindians were present during this time period.  Butchery sites are not as common, although their number is steadily growing (due to the work of Dan Fisher at the University of Michigan, and other archaeologists).

Paleo-Indian (also written as "Paleoindian") is the term for the first people to arrive in North America, about 16,000 years ago, near the end of the Ice Age.  The website www.Indians.org says that, “Their name, Paleo, actually comes from the Greek word “palaios,” meaning ancient.”

Tools, such as flint scrapers, used to possibly butcher the mastodon are being sent to another lab for DNA analysis to test for mastodon blood.  At the Ashland lab, bones and other materials are being power washed with water and examined for cut marks made by butchering tools.

Scavengers

Brush wrote, “There are a lot of gnaw and bite marks on the bone”, suggesting the possibility that the mastodon merely died of old age, its corpse eaten by scavenging animals.  But, it’s also possible that the scavengers were just mopping up what was left after the Paleo-Indians butchered it.

On Nov. 9, volunteers found another possible hammerstone, a large round stone used to as a hammer or maul to crush things.  Amateur “surface hunters” identify hammerstones by the pecks or pockmarks caused as the stones are pounded on things.   The latest hammerstone was found in the same plot where at least one other hammerstone was found.  Volunteers also found possible vertebrae on Nov. 9.

We also found more pieces of flint and fragments of bones, including small pieces of tusk.

Other items found since the dig began include possible leg bones, ankle bones, rib bones, jaw bones, wrist bones, and all four lower teeth of the mastodon.   And we found pieces of flint brought to the area by man from other parts of Ohio as well as pieces of charcoal that could have come from fires used to cook parts of the mastodon.  A possible fire pit was also found.

As far as I know, the only proven weapon found was a tiny projectile point (a “Merom Expanding Stemmed point “)—a Stone Age spear or arrow head—that belonged to Native Americans who arrived long after the mastodon was extinct.  While the mastodon dates back to beyond 8,000 B.C., the projectile “only” dates to between 1,600 B.C. to 810 B.C.

Mastodon On Its Last Legs

An analysis of the mastodon’s lower four teeth by volunteer Scott Donaldson showed that the mastodon had lived to a ripe old age that likely made it more vulnerable to predation by man or beast, as explained in my previous blog.  Donaldson led the work on restoring and preserving the teeth and served as one of the crew chiefs during the excavation.

In the fall of 2013, a soybean farmer found two of the teeth, two feet apart, after they were unearthed when a ditch was dug to lay drainage pipe.  This triggered the excavation which began Aug. 23, 2014.

The Nov. 9 dig was planned as the last dig before winter, but Brush later said that, weather permitting, he would schedule one more dig, after the weekend of Nov. 15-16.

Note:  I also have a website where I post information and photos on archaeology finds as well as all other aspects of natural history.  This blog and website began to catch the spillover from the monthly stories I write for the Apple Valley Cider Press, mainly a regular "Nature Article" feature.

Teeth Show Mastodon May Have Been Easy Mark

The photo  shows the full complement of four lower teeth.  It is "looking down" on the lower jaw (jaw bone absent) and the big teeth with the rounded ends are the back teeth.  (Photo by Scott Donaldson)

More confirmation that the mastodon killed and butchered in Morrow County was old came from an analysis of all four teeth recovered from the Cedar Creek Mastodon Site in Morrow County.

Scott Donaldson, who has led the work on restoring and preserving the teeth and served as one of the crew chiefs during the excavation, wrote a summary of his analysis that was e-mailed to volunteers on Nov. 2.

In his report, Donaldson said that if a mastodon lives to “ a ripe old age”, it will go through 24 teeth, shedding badly worn teeth from the front and erupting new ones at the back of the mouth, with either two or three teeth on each side of each jaw present at a given time.

He identified this mastodon as having its last teeth (numbers 5 and 6) on each side of the lower jaw. This and the amount of wear on the teeth indicated an advanced age.

He added that “…the apparent old age suggests a degree of infirmity which possibly made the animal vulnerable to being killed by man or beast, or which might be associated with a natural death.”

In the fall of 2013, a soybean farmer found two of the teeth, two feet apart, after they were unearthed when a ditch was dug to lay drainage pipe.  This triggered the excavation which began Aug. 23, 2014, and will end with a two-day excavation the weekend of Nov. 7-9.

Donaldson says the location of one of the teeth in Unit 5, one of  several 2- by 2-meter square excavation plots, “suggests that the as yet unidentified bone material nearby is part of the lower mandible [jaw bone]” the tooth came from.   A piece of jaw bone associated with the other three teeth was also found in the excavation.

Donaldson has done graduate work in anthropology/archaeology at Kent State University.  He has also done archaeology field and lab work with Dr. David Bush of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History field school.

Note:  I also have a website where I post information and photos on archaeology finds as well as all other aspects of natural history.  This blog and website began to catch the spillover from the monthly stories I write for the Apple Valley Cider Press, mainly a regular "Nature Article" feature.

From Christmas Bird Count to Road-Kill Bugs

An interesting set of articles in the current issue of Audubon Magazine.

The November/December 2014 issue of Audubon Magazine has an interesting set of articles on “three innovators who have led the charge in studying birds”—Chan Robbins (“The Pioneer”); Sam Droege (“The Incubator”); and, Jessica Zelt (“The Futurist”).

The articles, under the umbrella of “Citizen Science: Passing the Torch”, show how the torch was passed from 96-year-old Robbins to 56-year-old Droege to 31-year-old Zelt.

At least as far as birds go, the Audubon Christmas Bird Count —which both Robbins and Droege have participated in—at 115 years old, is the oldest citizen science project.  Robbins in fact, through his father who participated in the very first of these counts, has a lineage back to the entire 115 years of bird citizen science.

The Audubon bird count is the oldest citizen science project period, at least since the end of the era in which all science was done by citizen scientists rather than professionals.  It is definitely, as the magazine states, “the world’s oldest continuous wildlife census”.

I am fortunate enough to be preparing for about my 12th consecutive Christmas bird count.  From 2003 through 2011, I participated in the counts on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland.   Droege also participated in those counts, since his office is on the grounds of the Center, from which I retired after the 2011 Christmas bird count.  Droege is a biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, which is headquartered on 12,840 acres adjacent to the Agricultural Center’s 7,000 acres.   Robbins has studied these grounds for more than 70 years.

Robbins created the 50-year-old annual Breeding Bird Survey, a citizen science project that Droege was hired to take over in 1985.  I had the honor of interviewing Robbins twice about his life’s work.

The Johnny Appleseed of Citizen Science

Droege has formed local teams to participate in many citizen science projects, including Bioblitz , Frogwatch USA, and Cricket Crawl .  His professional research activities include work on developing native bee survey techniques and monitoring programs, surveys of saltmarsh birds and surveys of Rusty Blackbirds.  The bee survey work could spawn a national citizen science project.

Droege hired Zelt in 2008 to digitize about six million records of bird arrivals and departures, dating back to 1880.  Over the next six years, she managed to turn the task into a citizen science empire .

I've blogged about both Robbins (9/19/14 , 8/24/14, and 7/17/14)  and Droege (9-16-14, 6/29/14, 6/22/14, and 11/19/13) before.

Bug Road-Kill?

The magazine’s cover has the intriguing title of “115 Years of Citizen Science:  From the Christmas Bird Count to…Road-Killed Bugs?”

Although I knew of a regional U.S. project in which volunteers count road-kill as a measure of animal populations, this was the first I had heard of a road-killed bugs project.  In this project 250 volunteers drove around with adhesive on their front bumpers and license plates to capture bugs that splatter against cars.  Scientists analyzed the results and determined that each car kills two bugs for every 6.2 miles traveled.   The project is limited to the Netherlands currently, but with one in the United Kingdom, the U.S. can’t be far behind.  The magazine says that in the U.S., more than 300 million cars each travel 13,500 miles a year, on average, “so bug mortalities add up”.

Science Wants You!

In addition to the bug road-kill project, the magazine lists six other citizen science projects at the bottom of four of the pages of the three articles, under the title of “Scientists Want You”:

• Frogwatch USA 
• Kestrel nest watch 
• Project Budburst watch  
• Celebrate Urban Birds
• Yard Map  
• Christmas Bird Count    (The Christmas Bird Count occurs each year between  December 14 to January 5, with the one day count date varying by location.  For example,  now that I am in Howard, Ohio, I will participate in the Dec. 21 count sponsored by the Brown Family Environmental Center at Kenyon College in Gambier.  To register for this event, e-mail  dohertyh@kenyon.edu or call 740-427-5052.)

Mastodon Site Materials Await Winter Lab Tests

Cedar Creek Mastodon Site's Unit 13, excavated to the "O to 50 centimeter level" (0 to  1 toot 7 and 11/16 inches) had this photo taken for scientific documentation of exposed features.  One volunteer speculates that Feature D  could be part of a leg bone that extends into adjacent Unit 14--and that Features A1 to A4 could be part of a fire pit used to process some of the mastodon.  (Photo by Don Comis)

Possible hammerstone used to smash bones (near two red flags).   Unit 5 leader Richard Gross  lets high school freshman  Susanne Klein take a break from sifting dirt to join him in the more hard core work of excavating with a trowel.   On Oct. 25, we found flint carried to the site, presumably by prehistoric Native Americans, as well as two possible bone scrapers made from the flint.  (Photo by Don Comis)

It was a great day back at the Morrow County (Ohio) mastodon dig after my three week absence.  As soon as I got there I was struck by how many bones were exposed in the pits.   There are several pits—plots or Units--each 2 by 2 meters square (almost 7- by 7-feet square).

I was assigned to Unit 5 and it already had a possible hammerstone exposed from the last dig.  And our volunteer Unit 5 leader, Richard Gross--from the Sandusky Bay Chapter of the Archaeological Society of Ohio--said it has been very productive, providing a lot of evidence of Paleo-Indians butchering the mastodon.   This included the possible hammerstone—large round stones used as hammers or mauls, which the Indians may carry around in their “tool belt”.  In this case, the hammerstone might have been used to break mastodon bones.

Largest rock (upper part of photo), shown in Unit 5 on Oct. 25,  could be a hammerstone used to smash mastodon bones.  For scientists, lab tests for mastodon blood are needed for proof.  Amateur archaeologists look for marks from the stone used to hammer objects.  (Photo by Don Comis)

Richard Gross led the excavation on Unit 5 on Oct. 25.  His excavated dirt goes into the bucket for sifting.  Bones, flint, charcoal, etc., go into the paper bag, with possible flint artifacts wrapped in tinfoil.   The possible hammerstone lies near his yellow kneeling pad.   There are so many finds in the 7-foot-square plot that Gross only allows one other person with him at a time.   (Photo by Don Comis)

In response to a question I e-mailed him after the Oct. 25 dig, Dr. Nigel Brush, the Ashland University professor leading the excavation, said, “The only way to determine if the large rock from Unit 5 was a maul for breaking up bone is to send it to a lab for residue analysis (which we may do this winter).”   I guess that would be a DNA analysis to test for the presence of mastodon blood.  

    

Brush had other cautions in an e-mail message to me before the Oct. 25 dig:  “We may work at the site again next summer and or fall, depending on what our analysis turns up over the winter.  Given the shattered state of the bones, this is not a good site for recovering specimens for display.  Moreover, we have yet to find any definite artifacts.  Therefore, unless protein residues can be found on the flint flakes, or cut marks on the bone that reveal this was a butchery site, there is not much reason to continue excavating (in my opinion).”

Bone Scraping Tools?

We found two possible used scraping tools made from flint as we sifted soil dug from Unit 5, along with a lot of similar pieces and chunks of flint.   Brush said he hasn’t checked possible artifacts from the Oct. 25 dig yet and that he hasn’t seen any flint scrapers at the site so far.  If they do turn out to be flint scrapers, the one I found would be the first artifact I've found in my lifetime (because I've only searched once, for 15 minutes, on a farm field, to date).

 

Some of the flint found at the site seemed to have come from out of the area, presumably brought to the site by the people who butchered the mastodon.   Brush confirmed the flint was from out of the area, saying, “…Delaware chert was apparently brought to the site, as well as a piece of Upper Mercer chert from Coshocton County."

Upper Mercer chert (flint), found in bedrock  that is about 300 million years old,  is one of two of the most widely used flints in Ohio, the other being the colorful flint from Flint Ridge.  Delaware chert, found in bedrock that is more like 400 million years old, was used mostly locally where it was found, from Columbus north to Lake Erie.

I and other volunteers think it is likely the Paleo-Indians carried chunks of flint in their tool kits, available to make tools or weapons when needed.

New Finds From Oct. 25 Dig

In his Oct. 28 e-mail to the volunteers, Brush cited these new finds from the Oct. 25 dig:  “1) a possible feature in Unit 13, (2) a bovine incisor, and (3) a bone with something embedded in it (possibly just the root of a mastodon tooth).”

The unspecified features in Unit 13 were noteworthy enough to have photo documentation taken (see photo above).    In an e-mail to the volunteers on Oct. 29, Glen Boatman-- one of the participants-- shared his thoughts and ideas about the features, including that one might be part of a crushed leg bone found in adjacent Unit 14, and another might be a fire pit used to process parts of the mastodon.  Boatman also suggested that the fire pit may have been built with cobblestones from a nearby creek bed since cobblestones were found in Unit 16, at a depth of 2 to 3 feet.

The bovine incisor, found only on the lower jaw, might be from the mastodon.*  If so, that would be the fifth tooth found so far, and the first incisor found, I think.

The significance of something embedded in bone is that Brush is looking for spear heads or other weapons that were used to kill the mastodon.

The volunteers included several members of the Sandusky Bay Archaeological Society Chapter, as well as members of two other chapters—including one I belong to, the Kokosing Chapter in Mt. Vernon, Ohio.  In his Oct. 28 e-mail to the volunteers,   Brush said that besides Archaeological Society members, there were people from four universities, a number of visitors, two film crews, and about a dozen PhDs.

Hunting the Mastodon Documentary

I met Aaron Martin who is filming a documentary on the excavation called Hunting the Mastodon. He reads this blog and promises to send me a link to some of the footage he has shot in mid-November, so I can post it here!  Aaron works for Detroit Public Television, but the documentary is his own independent project, and he is planning to continue to follow the investigation into the mastodon site as it moves into the lab for the winter.

We found so many small pieces of bone on Oct. 25, some from tusks, that the first little brown bag we filled from sifting dirt from Unit 5 seemed to weigh 10 pounds.  We then switched to a new bag.   One of the new participants called me eagle eye, because, three weeks of experience, coupled with plenty of bones to uncover in the soil dug down to the 18-inch level, made it easy.  And, the autumn angle of the sun helped too.   The sunlight easily highlighted many pieces of bones so that their reddish clay-like color stood out.

The Unit 5 leader told me that flint similarly shines in a farm field after it is plowed.  That day, I learned what should have been obvious to me long ago:  When looking for tools or weapons made by prehistoric Native Americans (Paleo-Indians), learn what flint looks like and only look for flint.   This is good for beginners like me to avoid collecting a pile of stones that happen to look man-made. 

Naturally there are exceptions, like hammerstones, which are big heavy round rocks, I guess of many types.  But it would be hard for beginners like me to distinguish these from any other round rocks.

Context is important—so such a rock found near mastodon bones like at our site would be highly suspect as a hammerstone.   And hammerstones and other artifacts are most likely to be found near rivers Indians might have traveled on, exposed on farm fields by plowing.

On Oct. 25, I learned another tip about spotting bone pieces—when scratched with a fingernail, they show a shiny spot.  So the day was very productive for me, for sure.

*Correction:   On Nov. 4, I learned that the incisor was probably from a cow--mastodons don't have incisors.

Note:  I also have a website where I post information and photos on archaeology finds as well as all other aspects of natural history.  This blog and website began to catch the spillover from the monthly stories I write for the Apple Valley Cider Press, mainly a regular "Nature Article" feature.

Mastodon Dig Wrapping Up With Pile of Bones, Flint, Charcoal, and Four Teeth

Ohio History Connection Archaeology Blog's "Diorama showing mastodon being butchered by Clovis hunters". The Ohio History Connection, formerly the Ohio Historical Society, has a museum at its headquarters in Columbus, Ohio.

On Saturday, October 18, volunteers at the Cedar Creek Mastodon Site dig in Morrow County found a fourth mastodon tooth, which leaves only four more left to be found.  It was a tooth found by a farmer after drainage pipe was laid in his soybean field that prompted the excavation which began in August.  In addition to the teeth, volunteers have found parts of bones from legs, ribs, ankles, and tusks.

In his October 21 e-mail to volunteers, Ashland University’s Dr. Nigel Brush said, “Last Saturday, the volunteers who braved the cold made excellent progress on the excavation and also completed the excavation and removal of the fourth mastodon tooth from the site.  There are four teeth in the mandible and four in the maxillary. We have two front and two back teeth, but have not yet determined whether they are from the mandible or maxillary (or both).”

Brush said that there are only four units left to excavate, with one, Unit 15, almost done.  In his Oct. 14 e-mail Brush had  said that volunteers in Unit 15 are “still excavating a pile of rocks, bones, and flint flakes in the western 1/3 … Portions of two rib bones are visible in this unit.”

Goal:  Finish for Season by Nov. 8, More Work Next Year

The goal is to finish by November 8, weather permitting—but just for the winter.

In an article in the Sunday (Oct. 19) Columbus Dispatch newspaper 

Brush  said that the dig could go on for “as long as two years.”

By October 11, the volunteers  had finally reached  down to the layer containing most of the mastodon bones. 

The article explains the possible significance of finding the bones on piles of rock and gravel:  The Paleo-Indians may have butchered and cleaned the mastodon on those rocks.

Brush’s  Oct. 1 report to volunteers says  that “We are finally coming down on the layer containing the mastodon bones, although the long bones and ribs are broken into pieces…The bones are scattered about and lying on top of a gravel/cobble layer.  A few flint flakes are also being recovered from this layer.”

The flint flakes could be parts of weapons or tools  used by prehistoric Paleo-Indians to kill or butcher the mastodon.  The Dispatch article says that some of the pieces have been sent for testing for the presence of mastodon blood.

Charcoal found at the site could mean the Ice Age hunters cooked and maybe smoked some of the meat at the site.

Who Were First People in North America?

In his Oct. 12 column in the Columbus Dispatch , John Switzer talks about the controversy over who the first people who occupied North and South America were.   I first learned about the controversy while talking to a student at the Morrow County dig.   I had always thought that the first people were Paleo-Indians who arrived about 13,000 years ago.  They were called Clovis people, based on the fluted style of their projectiles, some of which have been found in Ohio, Switzer said, and some embedded in mastodon bones.   Now some archaeologists believe the Clovis people were preceded by 3,000 years by a different group of Paleo-Indians.

It still amazes me that people did not arrive in the Americas until 16,000 years ago, I guess blocked by the Ice Age!

In his October 2 report, Dr. Brush also asked for volunteers during the week to help with the lab work at Ashland University, saying that, “In addition to our Saturday excavations….there is a significant amount of work to do back in the lab at Ashland University in order to clean, sort, catalogue, and store the materials we are recovering from the site. “

I missed the past three digs (Sept. 27, Oct. 4, and Oct. 11), but hope to make the Oct. 25 dig, and the remaining digs, and maybe work at least one day at the University lab.

Making Ice Age Weapons on a 3-D Printer!

In an interesting post on the Ohio History Connection blog, Brad Lepper  shows a replica of the fluted spear style that marks the Clovis people, made by a laser scan. 

 He says they can “create near perfect 3D digital models of the objects.  These digital models can be reproduced in plastic using a 3D printer allowing us to generate as many copies as we want from a digital ‘mold’ that will never wear out. These reproductions can be used as hands-on educational resources or sales items for the museum shop.”

Lepper also has a great “Diorama showing a mastodon being butchered by Clovis hunters”,  that gives probably a fairly realistic idea of how it was done.  It shows Paleo-Indians hanging the meat on a  rack, which I would  think could have been for smoking the meat as well as for cooking it. 

Did Ice Age Hunters Hunt More Rabbits Than Mastodons?

Lepper also has a link to a 2008 column he wrote for the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch newspaper  in which he discusses a finding that of eight Clovis knives examined, half had the blood or rabbits.  The other four knives, Lepper reports,“ were stained with the blood of a variety of relatively large mammals, including both cervid (caribou, deer or elk) and bison blood on one [knife], bison blood on another, bear blood on a third, and white-tailed deer blood on the fourth.

As further proof that the Clovis hunters were not the macho big-game hunters usually depicted, Lepper cites a Cree Indian from northern Ontario telling an anthropologist that he lived on rabbit all one winter.

As an amateur who has only the experience of living with a group of Cree Indians in far northern Saskatchewan decades ago, I can say that they just about only hunted moose.  They supplemented their diet  by catching fish in large nets year-round and with beaver meat, from the animals they trapped for fur.  But I never saw them with a dead rabbit.

We, on the other as rank amateurs depended on snaring rabbits.  The trapper who was the main hunter for the group agreed we could stay in one of his cabins as long as we only trapped animals like squirrels and rabbits, which he did not trap for fur.  We lived off squirrels and rabbits and fish, beaver, and moose provided by this hunter/trapper.   He taught us to smoke our fish in a tee-pee style rack.

Giant Rabbits?

The story of living off rabbit reminds me of a man from a company trying to convince the Crees and other Canadians to allow a pulp mill near Saksatchewan’s La Ronge.  He told us that even if there were no moose because the woods was clear cut, the Crees could live on the rabbits, which would be much bigger because they’d have more shrubs to browse on!  Also, rabbit populations rise and fall in a cycle, which would make them a less dependable—not to mention smaller—source of food.

I’ll grant Lepper one point though, as shown by his diorama, women may have done most of the butchering work, not to mention cooking!

Handling Smithsonian Museum Pieces by Computer

Lepper’s description of the spearpoint replicas reminds me of the scans of a mastodon skeleton made by the University of Michigan’s  Museum of Paleontology, which I wrote about on September 24.  

And Lepper gives a link to the Smithsonian’s “X3D Beta” work with a whale skeleton, a wooly mammoth skeleton, and other museum specimens that are fun (as well as educational) to maneuver!

The difference is that the Smithsonian and Michigan Museums are putting their collection online for examination in 3-D from all angles, as though handling the artifacts, while the Ohio History Connection museum is giving people copies to handle or keep.

Morrow County Mastodon Site May Yield Rare Evidence of Paleo-Indian Involvement

Big mastodon bones being uncovered last Saturday, observed by Dr. Brush.  (Photo by Don Comis)

For a change, there were too many volunteers last Saturday, but it was a productive day with finding of possible flint tools near bones with possible cut marks, changing the dig's working hypothesis to a Paleo-Indian mastodon kill and/or butchering site.  (Photo by Don Comis)

In his September 24 e-mail report on the results of the Cedar Creek Mastodon site excavation in Morrow County, Ohio, on September 20, Ashland University’s Dr. Nigel Brush said, “The discovery of clusters of bones in association with some large flint flakes last Saturday, as well as possible cut marks on one of the bones…”  leads to “our present working hypothesis… that this site may be a Paleoindian [Also spelled "Paleo-Indian"] kill and/or butchery site.  This changes the goal of our excavation.  Instead of   trying to recover large bones from the mastodon skeleton, we will primarily focus on recovering evidence to validate our hypothesis that this is a human kill/butchery site.  Many mastodon sites have been found in Ohio and surrounding states, but only a few have good evidence for human interaction.   Therefore, we must change our excavation methodology….Our site has the potential to be rather significant, if we follow proper scientific procedures and are careful in our work.”

The changes include:

·         “Since we want to show the association between bones and possible flint tools, we must leave the bones and flint flakes/tools in place when we find them in undisturbed soils…” ;

·         Not touching flint flakes or tools “since we will be sending these off for blood residue analysis and oils on your skin may negate the analysis…”;

·         “Since we will be looking for additional cut marks on the bone, we must be very careful not to scratch the bones when exposing them.”

·         “Floors of excavation units must be kept flat so we can see what materials are in association at each level. Take each 10 cm level down in 5 cm (2 inch) stages.  In other words, take the whole unit down 5 cm. see what is showing up and record if necessary, then go down the other 5 cm.”

·         “…the final removal of bones, flint flakes/tools, and charcoal samples from excavated levels” will be supervised “to insure that they are properly handled, labeled, and stored.  Materials removed from these assemblages will be stored in separate containers from the regular excavation and screening bags…”.

The reason for these changes is that the new working hypothesis makes it important to document what materials are found near each other, as evidence they are related.   Flint flakes or tools  found near bones can be evidence that Paleo-Indians killed the mastodon at this spot and/or butchered it there.   Charcoal nearby could indicate a fire built by the Paleo-Indian hunters.

Paleo-Indians are prehistoric Native Americans that are generally thought to have arrived in North America from Asia at the end of the last Ice Age by crossing a vast ice and land bridge over the Bering Strait.   They were in Ohio during the time the mastodon being excavated probably died, about 13,000 years ago.  Some have blamed these hunters and a warmer climate for the extinction of mastodons.

Dr. Brush also said that, “When we first began excavating this site, we thought most of the mastodon skeleton might remain undisturbed, except for the damage caused by the backhoe during the digging of the drainage ditch.  That scenario is now much less likely since we are recovering fragmented mastodon bones from various parts of the body.  The skeleton could have become disarticulated by the activities of Ice Age predators, or by human hunters. “

But the discovery last Saturday of the large flint flakes near bones with possible cut marks led him to focus on the human hunters, at least for now.

"Discovering the Ice Age" Students Volunteer

Last Saturday’s excavation was in the fourth week of the mastodon dig and we had 62 volunteers, including 8 students from Dr. Brush’s  “Discovering the Ice Age” class, 12 students from Ashland’s  Geology Club and the club advisor, and 7 students from the University of Toledo. 

There were so many volunteers that I couldn’t find a spot to dig so I ended up sifting dirt all day, which was fine with me.  I shared a sifting screen with two novice students and another novice, the wife of an experienced volunteer.

Boy, did I feel great after finding two small pieces of the mastodon’s ivory tusk, before the other volunteers joined me.  I had learned the previous week to identify bones.  This week I learned to identify many tusk pieces because they tend to look like part of a wooden matchstick.

I had brought one to an experienced volunteer and he identified it as a piece of tusk.  When I found a similar piece I identified it as a piece of tusk.  It made me feel like an expert.  And when the complete novices joined me, they were asking me to confirm "bone or no bone" on their finds.  Soon they were finding bone after bone as well.  It was probably because the soil we were sifting had a lot of bone fragments, but it felt nice for them to say I was a good teacher when I complimented them on their finds.

A 300-million-year-old brachiopod fossil was a mere distraction during the mastodon excavation last Saturday.  (Photo by Don Comis)

  

One found a fossil and took it to her geology club advisor and he identified it as a 300-million-year old brachiopod.  It was exciting for us but of no interest to the mastodon diggers because they are only looking for bones or other things are about 13,000 years old, about the time the mastodon lived.

More big bones were emerging in Unit 14, which has been excavated to the 12- to 16-inch depth.  A new set of bones could be a wrist of the mastodon, but it hasn’t been completely unearthed yet.

The work continues this Saturday, September 27, but I’ll probably miss it because I had an earlier commitment to collect prairie seed at Guy Denny’s prairie in Fredericktown.

As a sidenote, Dr. Brush added that the University of Michigan has developed a 3-D image of a mastodon that we can use to identify the bones as we find them .  It can be seen here.   It is great, allowing you to rotate the skeleton in any direction, including upside down to see inside the rib cage. And  by clicking just right on a particular bone, you can examine the actual bone close-up and rotate it too!

The story behind the creation of this image by using new technology and scanned images of mastodon bones in the collection of the University’s  Museum of Paleontology is here.  It includes a nice video.

Dr. Brush also said that Brian Redman from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History will be visiting the site on Saturday, as well as a reporter from the Columbus Dispatch.

Note:  I'll try to add more of last Saturday's photographs to my "Mastodon Dig" slideshow on my website.

Kenyon College Trees Have Roots Back to 1614

Kenyon College grounds manager Steve Vaden leads the Apple Valley Garden Club on a tour of its trees, with some dating back 300 to 400 years.  (Photo by Don Comis)

This northern red oak is one of Kenyon's senior trees, 300-to-400 years old.  (Photo by Don Comis)

I went on a tour of Kenyon College trees with the Apple Valley Garden Club on September 17.  It was a nice homecoming to my alma mater, but it also showed me more of what I missed seeing when I was there.  Apple Valley is a development in Howard, Ohio, about 5 miles from Gambier, where Kenyon is located.

I was especially surprised to realize I never saw an “upside down” tree that is a favorite of many people, even though it is located near Pierce Hall, where I ate meals three times a day for three years.

The tree is a European weeping beech tree.  Its branches all reach down so low to the ground that you can hardly see the trunk.  Only when you step over one of Kenyon’s old stone and chain fences and enter through a break in the branches do you see the wild tree trunk which has fantasy-like shapes, including one that looks like an elephant.

Sure enough the beech tree is carved with initials and professions of love, but I didn’t see any dates back to the sixties when I was there, when it was an all-male college.

I imagine it is a great place to relax or read a book!

This European weeping beech tree is so upside down that you can't see its trunks or branches from the outside.  (Photo by Don Comis)

Once inside, the tree reveals the fantastic shapes of its trunks and branches.  (Photo by Don Comis)

Grounds manager Steve Vaden led the tour, telling us that the oldest trees were in the 300 to 400 year old range and the tallest tree was about 170 feet high.   It didn’t take long for Vaden to show us examples of the oldest trees, such as a northern red oak next to one of the buildings.

Naturally having so many old trees can cause problems.  Vaden described the time one of the oldest trees fell in the part of the campus where the graduation ceremonies are held—the day before the ceremony.

Vaden said that Dave Heithaus, facilities manager of the Brown Family Environmental Center at Kenyon, will do a timeline of a big oak tree that had to be removed, by examining the rings on a slab saved from the felled tree.

That should be quite a timeline if the tree goes back to 1614 or 1714!

One of the ways the college earned its Arbor Day Foundation “Tree Campus USA”  is by setting a goal of always keeping at least a 14 percent tree canopy cover on campus.  Kenyon has thousands of trees, Vaden said.

The tree program is part of Kenyon’s overall commitment to sustainability.   We were reminded of one example as we arrived for lunch in Pierce Hall---Kenyon was a pioneer among colleges nationwide in serving locally grown food (40 percent of the food).

The tree tour made me think back to the trees just cut in my Apple Valley yard, the oldest of which only dated back to about 1955, when it was all farmland.   I was older than the two trees cut down and one that was trimmed.  I figured their ages by doing my own ring-counting.

A "Tree Campus USA" banner hangs over us as we have a meeting before having lunch in a new addition to Gothic Pierce Hall.  (Photo by Don Comis)